Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Nielsen: 10 Percent of TV TSW Is With Streaming Services

An estimated 6.3 million people saw the premiere of Netflix’s “Lost in Space” within the first three days that the streaming service made it available this month, a promising start that would make it one of the outlet’s more popular series after the phenomenon of “Stranger Things.”

According to the AP, Nielsen’s data also shows the impact of binging: the average “Lost in Space” viewer watched the show for two and a half hours on those first few days. Netflix released 10 separate one-hour episodes of the show on April 13 and, within three days, nearly 1.2 million people watched the last episode, a clear indication they’d seen the whole season.

Roughly 10 percent of the total time spent watching television now is spent with streaming services, Nielsen said. The number approaches one-quarter of all viewing among viewers aged 12 to 17. Netflix dominates, with 49 percent of the streaming viewing coming on their service. YouTube’s 10 percent is the second-highest individual service, Nielsen said.

For all of the attention that new series put on by the streaming services gets, Nielsen said that 80 percent of the viewing goes to older programs like “Friends.”

Four years ago, 88 percent of television viewing came on cable or satellite. Now that number is down to 79 percent, an indication of the impact of cord cutting, Nielsen said.

Ratings highlights:

On the broadcast networks last week, ABC’s “Roseanne” was again the week’s most-watched show. The episode of “Roseanne” airing during week 28 of the 2017-2018 broadcast season, which began on April 2, topped all of its broadcast competition with a gain of 2.4 ratings points. That brings the episode’s total haul to a 6.3. For comparison, it’s closest competition was “The Big Bang Theory,” which grew by a 1.6 to a 4.0 total. The story was much the same in total viewers, with “Roseanne” growing by 43% to 22.1 million viewers total. “The Big Bang Theory” was again number two in the measure, reaching 17.7 million viewers after seven days of playback.

CBS easily won the week in prime time, averaging 6.7 million viewers. NBC had 4.8 million viewers, ABC had 4.4 million, Fox had 3 million, Univision had 1.6 million, ION Television had 1.3 million, the CW had 1.2 million and Telemundo had 1.1 million.

TNT was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 3.06 million viewers in prime time. Fox News Channel had 2.37 million, MSNBC had 1.94 million, HGTV had 1.35 million and ESPN had 1.3 million.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.5 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 7.9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6 million viewers.